For over 2000 years there’s a debate on the extent to which development is determined by nature (genes), or nurture (environment). There’s even a lot of disagreement about the definition of the concept ‘development’. But the main thing that the most of developmental scientist have consensus about is that development implies systematic and successive change. A central issue in the debate about the concept ‘development’ is the extent to which development is determined by human nature (genes) or nurture (the environment/context). The Developmental Systems Theory (DST) provides an alternative to the tendency to attribute patterns or aspects of (human) behaviour and (human) development to either genetically influences (nature) or to experience(s) (nurture) (Johnston 2010). Instead, according to the DST, nature and nurture interact, and this interaction contributes to development. 

So, according to the DST nature and nurture continually interact and this interaction contributes to development. This, thus, implies that the development can be influenced and that there’s no single course of development. 

The following movies show that a lot of top players who are born in the last 100 years enriched their individual soccer development by learning the soccer skills that their environment (nurture) teached them to, in combination with their talent (nature), become the top players that they are. So, the skills as shown in the movies are nurture. They are teached to them and they practiced the skills to be able to perform the skills in their games. And as you can notice the skills that for example 1915-born Stanley Matthews, 1926-born Alfredo Di Stefano (Argentina) and 1927-born Ladislao Kubala (Hungary) learned from their environment (nurture) kept in use and are still widely in use. 

So, why don't you practice these skills the top players show you (nurture) to, in combination with your own talent (nature), fullfill your potential and develop into the best player you can be? 

Now it's your turn!

"I always admired Zinedine Zidane. He didn't do tricks for the sake of it. He never wanted to show off. He just played a clever game. He is the player who decides games. I watched his technique and tried to do that in my game, and a lot of times it worked."

◦ Mesut Ozil (Player of Arsenal, former Real Madrid)